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October 7, 2010

Won't You Help?

This is truly a heart breaking story from the far away land of Sri Lanka.

Eight years ago on a warm, muggy night on the outskirts of Puthukkudiyruppu, buried beneath the rotting stump of a coconut tree, several dozen crocodile eggs hatched, sending tiny miniature reptiles into the fetid air. Their mother, Francine, watched nearby, anxious for her beautiful babies to escape the raging appetite of their father and his softball team.

Camouflaged by a bloody froth and their father's dipping sauce, nearly half her children survived and eventually discovered their ecological niche.

Pretty little Eva, who as a baby almost choked on a minnow, grew up and now ravages sheep and cattle near the sleepy little town of Tambuttagama.

Handsome Frederick, nearly picked off by a carp immediately after his birth, terrorizes cats and dogs in the garbage dumps of Megaswewa.

Megan, always the slow and clumsy one, catches rats and small children near the temples and madrasas of Karuppaddamurippu.

In their own special way, each of Francine's children have realized their potential and achieved a sense of self empowerment.

But now our story touches upon one of Francine's children who has not achieved his full potential, who struggles mightily with profound disabilities, and he needs our help:

Cliff the transgendered, cleft palate crocodile.

Cliff the Crocodile (he pronounces it Niff nah Nocconile) survives by trolling the rivers of central Sri Lanka, hoping to meet other lonely crocodiles who aren't offended by his lisp and half snout. Unable to hunt, he relies on the kindness of strangers. In the picture above he is seen carrying a lung-flavored fruit roll up given to him by members of the charitable rescue organization, "Reptiles The Size Of Mini-Vans R Our Friends."

The cost of corrective surgery for Cliff's cleft palate condition is prohibitive. Estimates range from $46,000 for a prosthetic snout to over $125,000 for a complete upper snout transplant. A team of veterinarians is on standby, ready to rub his tummy and perform the surgery required to restore Cliff to a full, productive and happy life. For just the monthly cost of a crate of delicious white lab rats, you can help Cliff realize his dreams. Think of what it will mean to Cliff!

Wetzy - the gubmint is doing something. Hitherto unspent stimulus funds have been encumbered to pay for most of Cliff's snout restoration.

The folks at Tastes Like Lung are very excited about this as new opportunities for stimulus funding will emerge as Cliff uses his new snout to chow down on livestock. Someone has to pay the bill and it certainly won't be Cliff!

In fact, the folks at Tastes Like Lung are so sure of this that they have created another Not-For-Profit to handle the livestock claims. This NFP is called Smells Like Theft.

Splash - if nothing else, the gubmint is here to "hep" Cliff in whatever endeavor he chooses. A female croc with spina bifida has been located as a mate for Cliff. Crawling on top of her to mate will undoubtably open up those festering lesions on her back requiring extensive veternarian care for the full term of her pregnancy, but hey, what's stimulus funding for?

I'm a superstitious man, and if some unlucky accident should befall Cliff - if he is to be shot in the head by a poacher, or be found hung on some guy's shed... or if he should eat a bad catfish - then I'm going to blame some of the people on this blog; and then I do not forgive. But with that said, I pledge - on the souls of my grandchildren - that I will not be the one to stand in the way of this animal's new beak or snout..

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